WND EXCLUSIVE

NSA slayer calls for firings at CNN

Removal of Lemon, Toobin sought after 'hit piece'

The attorney whose case produced a judge’s ruling that the National Security Agency’s personal phone-data-collection program likely is unconstitutional is asking CNN to remove two on-air personalities after a “hit piece” against him.

Larry Klayman said in a statement Monday he has sent a “respectful demand” to CNN CEO Jeff Zucker to “take appropriate action, as MSNBC was forced to do with Martin Bashir.”

Bashir, who hosted his own show, resigned amid negative public reaction to his statement that someone should dump excrement on former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

Klayman, founder of the government watchdog group Freedom Watch, was on CNN Dec. 17 with host Don Lemon and legal expert Jeffrey Toobin a day after the judge’s ruling.

In a WND commentary, Klayman called the CNN figures “low-class mouthpieces” of the Obama administration who carried out a “hit piece designed to attack my character and reputation.”

Larry Klayman

“I accepted an interview proposal from Don Lemon on CNN. My appearance Tuesday night was preceded by a profile of me that included disparaging remarks from Bradley Blakeman, the lead-in to Lemon’s hit piece and someone I was forced to sue for improperly using Freedom Watch’s name and forming another group not coincidentally named ‘Freedom’s Watch’ – a front public interest group set up for Sheldon Adelson to run interference for George W. Bush and David Petraeus during the Iraq war to try and sell the ‘surge.’ Not surprisingly, the group shut down after Bush left office, and Blakeman, while a self-proclaimed strategist for MSNBC and CNN, now works with Al Jazeera, the network born out of love and respect for shariah law, which obtained and aired tapes from terrorists, including Osama bin Laden, while protecting their whereabouts.”

Klayman said Lemon “threatened to turn my microphone off and get me removed from the television screen (and then did) when I responded to his insults.”

“Characteristically, legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin chimed in, calling me a ‘lunatic,’ belittled my intelligence and then disrespected the federal judge’s ruling by alleging that the ‘case is based on [my] tinfoil hat paranoia about the NSA.’ Interestingly, Toobin’s wife for several years held an executive position at Verizon, the company that was just enjoined by the court and successfully sued by me. In fact, on June 10, 2013, Toobin wrote for the New Yorker: ‘These were legally authorized programs; in the case of Verizon’s Business’ phone records, Snowden certainly knew this, because he leaked the very court order that approved the continuation of the project. So he wasn’t blowing the whistle on anything illegal; he was exposing something that failed to meet his own standards of propriety.'”

Today, Klayman said he fired back at his antagonists, noting that Lemon, in particular, was “a big supporter of Obama.”

He charged Lemon was trying to do a “hit piece” to diminish the significance of the judge’s ruling against Obama.

“I am disappointed in CNN, which treated me with respect in the past. Don Lemon is a leftist hack. He not only has repeatedly attacked Republicans and conservatives, but has also played the race card on a number of occasions. He and his ultra-leftist colleague, Jeffrey Toobin, who had the high class to impregnate the daughter of CBS’s Jeff Greenfield and was alleged to have stolen classified documents when he worked fro Iran-Contra prosecutor Lawrence Walsh to write a tell-all book, should also not be throwing stones. And his fellow proponent, Blakeman is clearly nothing more than an unethical sell-out who aids the Islamists at Al Jazeera. Their lack of journalistic ethics should be rewarded by CNN with their firing,” Klayman said.

He said he found it “outrageous that instead of celebrating a victory for the U.S. Constitution and the American people, Lemon and his hoodrats spent almost 10 minutes trying to assassinate me personally, denied me freedom of speech by cutting my mic and removing me from the screen, and then instead of analyzing the case, they claim I made it all about me when the hit piece was indeed named ‘Who is Larry Klayman?'”

“Classic ultra-leftist deceit and dishonesty and CNN must now restore its image,” he said. “It too, along with the public, was disgraced by Lemon and Toobin.”

WND reported that Klayman believes the manipulation was at the behest of someone far higher than the cable network.

“What CNN did to me … was a hit piece orchestrated against me by the Obama White House with the direct involvement of the Democratic National Committee in an attempt to discredit me and to turn the public against Judge Leon’s court decision that the NSA is violating Fourth Amendment rights,” he said.

Klayman has praised the courage of Judge Richard Leon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who ruled that the NSA’s regular collection of virtually all phone records is almost certainly unconstitutional.

Klayman’s case, on behalf of a Verizon Wireless customer, was launched after the extent of government spying on Americans was unveiled by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who said the court’s decision made him feel justified in releasing classified documents. Named in the case are the NSA, Department of Justice and several U.S. officials, including President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder.